Although financial terms weren’t disclosed, SunPower said Thursday that Apple will co-own the projects, which have the combined capacity of 40 megawatts.

Apple has previously said it wants to be carbon neutral everywhere it operates, but that admirable goal is considerably absent in China, where the bulk of its products are made. Until now, unhappiness over air pollution mainly has been directed at the Chinese government, but Apple — already under fire over labor and customer-support issues –could become a major target. Initiatives like these could go a long way toward making sure its image in China remains favorable.

Apple tends to be financially involved in clean-energy projects only when they provide electricity for its operations. Apple and SunPower, for example, have partnered together in the U.S. to develop six solar power plants, all of which provide at least some power to Apple’s facilities.

In this case, however, Apple’s solar plants are being built in Sichuan’s remote Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefectures, far from Apple’s corporate offices, retail stores or manufacturing partners. The region is known for its rolling grasslands, where herders take yaks and sheep to graze, and where multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags are strung up along the slopes of hills.

In an interview on Thursday with China’s official Xinhua news agency, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives, Lisa Jackson, said the solar plants will be located in grasslands primarily used for raising yaks. Ms. Jackson, who was previously head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said Apple will take care to minimize the impact of construction on the environment. An Apple spokeswoman said Friday in an email that Apple and its local partners won’t use cement to install solar panels or dig trenches for wires during construction.

Apple has been expanding quickly in China as it attempts to go after the country’s burgeoning middle class. The company currently has 21 retail stores in mainland China and hopes to double that number by the end of next year. Although Apple’s latest efforts to produce clean energy in China might be a drop in the bucket when compared with amount of fossil fuels consumed by its manufacturing partners, Ms. Jackson told Xinhua that the company hopes to lead by example for its more than 330 suppliers.

Apple’s latest projects join a wave of new solar farms under construction in western China. Solar-panel makers, Chinese policy banks and other clean-energy developers are all piling into the business after China revived its solar industry amid the country’s ambitious targets to add as much as 18 gigawatts of solar-power capacity by the end of this year.

Earlier this year, a court in suburban Beijing said it was preparing to try employees of a Chinese drone company on charges of “negligently endangering public safety” after an unmanned aircraft disrupted commercial flights and led the air force to scramble helicopters in response.

The drone flight in question happened on Dec. 29, 2013, in the eastern Beijing suburb of Pinggu. Operated by employees of Beijing UAV Sci-Tech Co., the drone forced several commercial flights to alter their flight paths and caused others to be delayed. According to reports in October, the People’s Liberation Army dispatched helicopters to force the drone down.

In Sunday’s report, the People’s Liberation Army Daily said the drone was in fact shot out of the air.

The shooting came after an unidentified object showed up on military radar, according to the report. Air force commanders ordered several regiments to prepare for battle and dispatched six ground teams to the area where the object was detected. Minutes later, the air force identified the object as a small aircraft and immediately notified the Beijing Military Area Command, as well as the public security bureaus in Beijing and neighboring Hebei province.

A military helicopter was dispatched to investigate further. “The drone continued to ignore warnings and fly in the direction of Beijing Capital Airport,” the newspaper said. “The Beijing Air Force commander made a firm decision: Avoid densely populated areas and use a shotgun to bring the target down.” (It wasn’t clear from the report what sort of weapon that would be, leaving China Real Time to wonder whether they used a shotgun-like weapon attached to the helicopter or whether a crewmember popped off a 12 gauge through an open window.)

After the helicopter opened fire, the drone fell. As the helicopter descended to check on the drone, it discovered the three operators next to a car. The trio and their car were immediately taken into custody, the newspaper said.

That’s the message from China’s State Council, which in the wake of an earthquake in southwest China that killed at least 589 people has urged eager volunteers to stay away from the disaster zone.

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, hundreds of volunteers from across the country traveled swiftly to the site of the quake with the goal of doing good works. One major effect of their presence, though, was car-clogged roads, some of which had already been blocked or reduced to muddy swirls of broken rubble in the aftermath of the quake, which felled tens of thousands of buildings and left more than 2,400 injured.

On Wednesday, state broadcaster CCTV echoed the State Council’s message, saying that authorities needed to dissuade “non-professional rescue organizations, volunteers, tourists etc. from going to the disaster zone.” Doing so, CCTV said, would support the work of quake rescuers.

State media has urged those wanting to assist with the quake relief effort to consider making monetary contributions instead of rushing to Yunnan. Similar outpourings of volunteerism have been blamed for hindering relief efforts in China in the past, notably during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed some 87,000 people. In addition to traffic jams, such volunteers also need food and water and can sometimes be a burden on already stretched supplies of the same.

Still, according to official figures, at least 650 volunteers have flooded the disaster zone since the quake struck on Sunday afternoon, includingmany decked out with their own uniforms and equipment.

The center designated a keeper who is proficient in English to take care of Tai Shan because his US keeper Nicole Meese had communicated with him when he was just 1 month old. Tai Shan has not yet learned the southwestern Sichuan dialect.

“Tai Shan is one of the center’s nine pandas born overseas and returned to the base,” said Wang Yongyao, an official with the administrative bureau of the Wolong National Nature Reserve, which oversees the center.

The male bear is one of a special group of China’s giant pandas that have to adapt back home after being born overseas.

The center is the world’s largest giant panda conservation and research organization. It started loaning pandas to other countries and regions in 1996. Its pandas have given birth to a total of 12 cubs overseas since.

Under an agreement for global giant panda preservation, giant pandas born overseas belong to China and must be returned to the country after they turn 2.

China agreed to extend Tai Shan’s loan to the US because of the bear’s huge popularity there.

A pair of adult pandas can also be loaned overseas for 10 years under an agreement between China and the host.

“Everyone loves pandas and they are like citizens and residents of their host country or region. China is also often asked to extend the loan of the bears,” said Zhang Hemin, chief of the administrative bureau of the Wolong National Nature Reserve.

“As a result, only their cubs born overseas have returned home.”

Of the 12 cubs born overseas, only three aged under 2 have yet to return home. The other nine bears live in the Dujiangyan and Ya’an bases in Sichuan.

The other, Wei Jin, 55, is a vice-commissar of the Tibet military region, a post he was promoted to in 2011. He has held senior military posts in the southwest province of Sichuan, including as senior army propaganda officer in Chengdu, the province’s capital.

The latest investigation into Ye and Wei is also believed to be part of the wider anti-corruption campaign in the PLA. President Xi Jinping, who also leads the military as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), has repeatedly vowed to clean up the beleaguered military.

Ye left the military in January after reaching the retirement age of 60. He has served in the Sichuan military region since 2006.

His early military career started in Tibet, Sichuan’s neighbour in the west, but most of the time Ye served in liaison offices in Sichuan.

A former mining magnate with suspected ties to the family of China’s retired security tsar Zhou Yongkang was sentenced to death on Friday on charges of leading a gang on a crime spree spanning two decades.

The sentencing of Liu Han, handed down by a court in the central province of Hubei, was the culmination of one of the highest-profile cases against a private businessman since President Xi Jinping took office last year and began a campaign against pervasive graft.

Liu’s younger brother Liu Yong, also known as Liu Wei, was also sentenced to death. Microblog statements from state media outlets China Central Television and the Xinhua news agency said the brothers, along with their 36-member “mafia-style” gang, committed intentional homicide.

Xi’s crackdown has zeroed in on Sichuan province, where Liu’s company – privately held Hanlong Mining – is based. Sichuan was a power base for Zhou, the retired chief of China’s vast domestic security apparatus, who stands at the centre of the biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, sources have told Reuters.

Sources have told Reuters that Liu was once a business associate of Zhou Bin, Zhou Yongkang’s eldest son.

State media have not explicitly linked Liu’s case to Zhou Yongkang, but have said Liu’s rise coincided with Zhou’s time as Sichuan’s Communist Party boss.

Liu’s lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.

Willy Lam, a scholar of Chinese history and politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said there would be extra attention paid to the case because of Liu’s links to the Zhou family.

“I think what’s happening is that Xi Jinping and (Party anti-corruption tsar) Wang Qishan want to establish a harsh precedent because this is one of the biggest corruption cases since Xi took over,” Lam said. “They want to set a precedent to make people afraid, in a sense, to have a deterrence impact on corrupt officials.”

IN RECENT days government office-workers around China have been called into meetings to study an article written nearly a quarter of a century ago by an obscure local leader on how to be a good secretary. Its advice—act modestly and don’t abuse your position for profit—would be banal were it not for the job the author now holds. The article was written by the current president, Xi Jinping. Those attending know full well that the purpose of the meetings is not to share tips on how to keep bosses happy, but to focus minds on a bigger issue: that personal assistants to leaders are often hugely powerful and sometimes just as hugely corrupt. And Mr Xi wants to rein them in.

A string of detentions has shed new light on the power of mishu, as these assistants are known. Between June and February, news emerged of investigations into four former mishu of Zhou Yongkang, a retired member of the Communist Party’s supreme body, the Politburo standing committee. Although the party does not say so, it is an open secret that Mr Zhou is the main target of China’s biggest anti-corruption campaign in years. He is the first person of standing-committee rank to face a corruption inquiry since the party came to power in 1949. Mr Xi appears not to want state-controlled media to mention Mr Zhou or his sins until a case against him is fully prepared. But the mishu, along with several other associates of Mr Zhou who have been detained in recent months, have become fairer game.

The alleged offences of the “mishu gang”, as the four have been dubbed in the Chinese press, appear to relate at least partly to activities after they left Mr Zhou’s service. In China a personal assistant to a high-ranking leader is often chosen by the leader himself—sometimes plucked from obscurity—and retains high rank even after his boss has moved to a different job (if he is not taken along to the new post).

There is plenty of scope for corruption as a mishu, because of the control the job gives over access to the leader. There is also great opportunity for acquiring independent power. Mr Zhou’s four former secretaries went on to take up high-ranking positions in government and state-owned business. Knowing the dark secrets of their former bosses gives ex-mishu a useful bargaining chip in acquiring plum jobs. The former bosses can benefit from placing their one-time confidants in positions they wish to influence.

How many words is a picture really worth? In an ongoing feature, China Real Time is asking readers to dream up captions for a recent news photo. This week, a giant panda munches bamboo while contemplating a TV screen in Yunnan Province.

Prosecutors in central China on Thursday charged the former chairman of Hanlong Mining, which had tried to take over Australia’s Sundance Resources Ltd, with murder, gun-running and other crimes as part of a “mafia-style” gang.

Police last year announced the detention of Liu Han and an investigation into his younger brother Liu Yong – also known as Liu Wei – on suspicion of various criminal activities.

In a report carried by the official Xinhua news agency, prosecutors in the central province of Hubei said the two Lius set up the gang in 1993, along with 34 others, which “carried out a vast number of criminal activities”.